


time’s forever frozen, still

by astraea_7



Category: Lost
Genre: Alex POV, slight reference to season 3, this ended up way longer than i meant it to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 18:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30110457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astraea_7/pseuds/astraea_7
Summary: your whole life is laid out for you in polaroid pictures, and you gather them close to your heart.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	time’s forever frozen, still

**Author's Note:**

> how alex sees the world. title comes from photograph by ed sheeran.  
> (sorry in advance if this makes no sense, it sort of just wrote itself. i wondered for a while whether to post or not)

your whole life is laid out for you in polaroid pictures, and you gather them close to your heart. sometimes you organize them chronologically in rows, or group them by subject or background. occasionally you tack them to a bulletin board, or clip them with clothespins to a string. they’ll never stay contained for very long, though, and they’ll flutter to the floor in heaps of memories for you to sift through once again. 

other times you scoop them all up and hold them in your fists, because they’re the only thing you have and you’ll never let them go.

your face beams back at you from the walls of your little yellow house, because you are the only thing your father’s camera wants to capture (the only thing he wants a record of). he loans you it sometimes- his physical camera, not the one in his mind- and you wander the beach and the jungle with it held to your eye, your finger on the shutter just waiting for the right moment.

as for the camera in your father’s mind? you don’t want to know the images he slots away with a blink of his buggy eyes. the things he does are mysterious and unfathomable; you’ve known that from a very young age. you hide in the shadows just past his line of sight, and observe but never speak a word because _if he knows that you know, the breakable peace will shatter_.

you think he knows anyway, and is pretending not to. he’s always known when you’re lying, or even holding something back. but it doesn’t work the other way around; you’ve never been able to penetrate the fog in his eyes to find the truth.

the collection of your pictures grows by the year, by the day. unlike your father, you only have a few of yourself- rare ones that he took and didn’t plaster up behind glass. even if you didn’t take them, they are still little pieces of your story, and you file them away with the rest.

shots of a frog pressed to the trunk of a tree, textures contrasting into a perfect piece of art. shots of the treetops from lying on the ground, forming a crisscrossing canopy far above. shots of a white-petaled flower pushing tentatively through the soil behind your house. shots of the night sky, too much to ever fit in one photograph, but too beautiful not to try.

shots of all the little things, because those are what you see. all the little things that make up you- bits and pieces of hope in your dull confinement of a life.

(the world was brighter when you were younger and captured in snapshots of sunlight and waterfalls, everything overwhelming and exciting just waiting for you to discover it. but after sixteen years you’ve been everywhere but across the sea, and that’s the only place you really want to go.)

shots of people are your best- you catch them at just the right moment, when their guard is down and their faces are softened with a glimmer of something other than the usual mask. you look at those after you’re yelled at or punished, to remind you that they really are people, same as you. it’s just buried down deeper in them.

photographs are your lifeline, keeping you tethered when you don’t want to stay and setting you free when you can’t take it any longer. photographs are a patchwork quilt that cover you when you sleep and protect you from your dreams. photographs are your past and your future, everything that once was and could be again. 

but one day the blank fog in your father’s eyes sharpens into anger, and the bland cadence of his voice gives way to the fury underneath. you’d like to say he wasn’t justified, that what he was upset about was minor, but it was a compilation of all the small rebellions you’ve had to break free from his control. all they’ve done is leave you right where you started and more alone than ever.

you enter your bedroom in a flood of tears and go to your box of photos, your solace. but when you open up the lid, all you see is confetti.

your whole life is laid out for you in shreds of colored paper that once made up something beautiful. but it’s all torn to pieces, and so are you, and the only way to remake it all is to tape the jagged edges crudely together. it’ll work as a temporary fix, but nothing will ever be the same.

your new self is bitter because you can’t manage to make the broken edges realign. you smash your father’s camera and leave the shards scattered on his bedroom floor. you dig a hole in the backyard and let go of all your photographs, because they were once precious moments but now they’re only bits of tape and paper. trash playing at being someone’s special thing, just like you were.

(but even your new self can’t let go entirely, because you see your life through the lens of a camera and that’s how it will always be. it doesn’t matter if the camera is in your hands or in your eyes, and your eyes take the best pictures anyway.)

now you have images shuttered away in an album behind your irises, and you save everything you see. only in your mind, though, because that’s the only place you can put something where it can’t be taken from you.

you get your chance to run.

you’ve tried before, but never gone far. maybe it was because deep down you didn’t want to leave your father, you just wanted him to change. or maybe it was because you knew there was nowhere to go.

but you help two people your father has caged and with them goes the one person you let yourself hold outside of photographs. you make to leave with them ( _and you’re actually gonna do it this time_ ) but then you’re stopped at the last second and why are you more relieved than disappointed?

you tell yourself it’s to stay with your father, you tell yourself it’s to protect the others- but you know it’s because you’re afraid.

you don’t know how to see the world outside your narrow little lens. you wouldn’t even know how to start. the overwhelming size of the world outside this little piece of land that you’ve photographed a thousand times is _terrifying_. for all your hopes of getting away, you’re too scared to make it happen.

so you watch the boat drift away and you prepare to go back to your little yellow house, ripped down to shreds again for your realization that this is all you’ll ever have. and you’re trapped by not only your father, but yourself.

you think you would like to remember this later, and so you focus your eyes and take it all in. but the angles are off, the colors dull and bleeding together. you strain to capture the scene in a perfect photograph, but it’s too vast for your narrow view and too dark for your hope-filled heart.

you try to keep it anyway.

but you can’t see with your eyes anymore, because everything is cloudy and out of focus like your thumb has smudged the camera lens. and you could try to take the picture, but it’s nothing but a blur. you’ll never remember all of this, you’ll never know what you used to have. 

and the camera’s card is full anyways, no room for another picture. so if you ever look back at the snapshots of your old life, you’ll never know that this moment existed. 

it doesn’t matter anyways, that collection of old pictures- they belonged to another girl, long ago. 

they aren't part of the girl you are now.


End file.
